


Bent

by Rachel_Martin64



Category: Supernatural, X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crossover, Episode: s01e15 The Benders, Gen, Status: Incomplete, Work In Progress, x3 denial
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-03-24 16:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3775939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rachel_Martin64/pseuds/Rachel_Martin64
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The X-Men are in Hibbing, Minnesota to take down an out-of-control mutant. Supernatural episode-related: "The Benders."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Thanks** to Ridesandruns, Musamea and Water Soter!
> 
> This story was written around 2007.

“Scott, you gotta do something about your 8-track collection.”

“Yeah? What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s an _8-track collection._ Wake up and smell the twenty-first century.” Ororo rattled the shoebox. “Where the hell do you buy these things anymore, anyway?”

“Eight Track Heaven dot com.”

“You use the Internet to buy 8-tracks? That’s just perverted.” She pushed the box aside and rested her folded arms on the roof of the car. “You ever think of installing an iPod player in this heap?”

“Forget it.”

“Why?”

“Because this heap is a 1967 Mustang. And that is the original factory-installed 8-track player. And there will be no iPods played in this car.”

But Scott was smiling as he slouched against the side of the damn car that was older than either one of them. The rising sun turned his shaggy brown hair red and highlighted the scruff on his face. No one glancing at his Oakley lookalikes would think them anything more than an overpriced pair of sunglasses, or more likely a cheap knockoff purchased from a street vendor. He had a ball cap tucked into the back of his threadbare Levis, scuffed shitkickers on his feet, and an unbuttoned flannel over a tee proclaiming GEORGE BUSH KICKS BUTT.

Not that she herself wasn’t appropriately decked out for their foray into the hinterland. Her platinum hair was tucked up under a short Afro wig. Tinted contacts turned her blue eyes brown. She wore scuffed flats, elasticized jeans, a tee adorned with fake lace and sequins, and a man’s overshirt in a lame attempt to camouflage her ginormous boobs. Ororo supposed she would attract attention anyway, a black woman traveling with a white man. She’d figured as much ever since driving into Hibbing, Minnesota, Iron Capital of the World, population 17, 071, of which better than ninety-seven percent was white.

She propped her chin on her forearms and ignored the mostly covert looks from the other patrons. Watched the numbers click over on the gas pump, watched her breath condense in the air. She listened to the plastic pennants flap overhead, sniffed eau de gasoline and tried to wake up after the overnight haul from Saginaw, Michigan. Not that she knew what the hell they were doing in Hibbing either.

And okay, the cross-country drive hadn’t been the torture she liked to pretend it was. Listening to Scott sing along to AC/DC was a hilarious, once-in-a-lifetime, not-to-be-missed experience. Driving hour after hour, through rain and sun and flurries, amiably arguing about life, the universe and everything, Ororo could imagine she and Scott were kids again, just the two of them again, Charles Xavier’s very first charity cases. Just the two of them, the way it had been before Jean Grey had blown their tentative teen romance all to hell.

But they weren’t kids anymore, and Jean, in death, loomed larger in their lives than ever. Scott remained morbidly faithful to his deceased fiancée – if he’d been a woman, Ororo was sure he’d still be wearing the engagement ring. They weren’t kids, they were self-appointed superheroes, and while she had a lot more patience than Logan – okay, that wasn’t saying much – she figured it was past time she learned just why Scott had dragged her black ass to northernmost Minnesota. Or at least, why they hadn’t flown.

She glanced around. They were fairly isolated on the far end of the row of pumps. No one was near enough to overhear. She rapped her knuckles against the roof of the Mustang, and Scott glanced up.

“Hey, bro. Not that I don’t enjoy road-trippin’ with you, but you said this was a job.”

His smile faded. With no conscious effort Ororo noted and interpreted the tension in his neck, the tightening of his jaw, the bunching of the muscles between his shoulders. _This one is lower than whale shit._

“Yeah. Sorry. Not trying to be mysterious. Just – " Scott exhaled slowly. “I’ve been tracking a guy. A mutant. For the past nine months. And I’ve always been one step behind.” He paused. “People have died. A woman in Palo Alto. A woman in St. Louis. Three men in Saginaw.”

Ororo said nothing. She looked steadily at him.

The gas pump clicked off. Scott turned away, lifted the nozzle out of the tank and hung it up. He screwed the gas cap on. He turned back. And she wasn’t looking at Scott anymore. She was looking at Cyclops.

“No one else dies. It’s going to end here, tonight, in Hibbing.”

Scott opened the driver’s-side door and slung himself inside. Ororo slid into the car as well. She tucked the box of tapes under the shotgun seat and pulled the combined lap-and-shoulder belt across her body. Scott had installed seatbelts in his thirty-nine-year-old car, but not an iPod player. She guessed it wasn’t the time to heckle him.

__________  


“We’re looking for a big-block,” Scott said indistinctly around a mouthful of Egg McMuffin. He washed it down with a gulp of coffee and set the cup down. Ororo raised her eyebrows. She had thought nothing short of the apocalypse could get a physical fitness fanatic like Scott to eat anything on the McDonald’s menu.

Misinterpreting her quizzical look, he elaborated. “A 1967 Chevy Impala Super Sport 427. Four hundred twenty-seven cubic-inch engine. Three-eighty-five horse. Weighs nearly two tons. The body’s six and a half feet wide and bumper to bumper it's over seventeen and a half feet long. It may still be painted black and it may still have Kansas plates.”

He picked up the portfolio lying between them on the bench seat and unzipped it. It was stuffed with newspaper clippings, printouts, maps, and pages of notes in Scott’s careful handwriting. He extracted a piece of paper and handed it to her. A color printout of a web page. She studied the low, long silhouette of a mean-looking muscle car. Wasn’t going to be hard to spot this machine among the mommy-mobiles.

“So our boy’s got a thang for classic cars.”

“His Achilles heel. These babies need more maintenance than Joan Rivers. Once I tied him to the Impala, I had him. It was just a matter of detective work.” Scott picked up the styrofoam coffee cup again and drained it. “Two days ago Mr. Jimmy Page, formerly of Led Zeppelin, came out of retirement to rent a stall in one of those do-it-yourself auto shops in Saginaw. Everyone in the shop remembers his car. A 1967 black Chevy Impala SS427 with Kansas plates. Mr. Page changed the front drum brake shoes and the manual transmission fluid. He talked about needing to replace the manual steering gear box.”

“I guess that explains the Mustang’s pressing need for maintenance in Saginaw.”

Scott nodded and rolled the empty cup between his hands. “Yesterday Mr. Malcolm Young of AC/DC posted a query on the Classic Car dot com forums. Looking to buy a 1967 Chevy Impala manual steering gear box.” Scott smiled briefly. “Mr. Arthur Miller offered to sell for $225, which is about seventy-five less than the going rate. Mr. Young and Mr. Miller exchanged emails. Mr. Miller offered to accept cash on delivery. Mr. Young bit.” Scott crushed the cup and stuffed it into his McDonald’s bag. “To be held until called for at the Hibbing post office.”

“And thus the sudden fascination with classic rock.”

“It’s growing on me, actually. By the way, Mr. Young’s email traced back to a wireless local area network in Saginaw. Free wi-fi at a coffeeshop, in other words.”

“That’s a long, thin thread, Scott.”

“Yeah. Well, unlike a real detective, I have Charles on my side. Charles picked up a lot of telekinetic activity in Saginaw between the fifth and the seventh. Coincidentally, the Saginaw News reported three tragedies in the same family over the same period of time. The Miller family. One out-of-the-blue suicide, one freak accident resulting in death, and another suicide.” Scott turned his head and looked at her. “It’s him. The neighborhood kids remembered the Impala parked in front of the Millers’ house. Supposedly driven by the parish priest.”

“A priest driving a muscle car?”

“The grown-ups didn’t see anything but an old clunker. Very much in keeping with the vow of poverty and all.”

Ororo leaned forward and stroked the dash of the Mustang. “Bait.”

“Yep.”

She turned her head. “He got a thang for black chicks too?”

"Blondes." Scott cranked down his window, balled up his McDonald’s bag, and pitched it. It fell into a trash can several car lengths’ away. “If I thought he targeted black women, you'd still be in New York. This guy is evil, Ro. He kills people for fun, and he kills them in the most bizarre and painful and humiliating ways you can imagine. He's like a demon that crawled out of hell.”

Ororo could not recall Scott ever speaking so harshly of another person, even William Stryker. She pushed a nugget of compressed hash browns into her mouth, chewed slowly, and swallowed. “This sweetheart got a real name?”

Scott twisted the key in the ignition. His mouth twisted at the same time. “Winchester. Like the rifle. Dean Winchester.”

_____________  


The early morning light glittered off the highly polished hood of the Mustang as Scott drove down U.S. 169, the business route that ran through Hibbing. He took a downtown ramp and explored the north-south avenues and the east-west streets and zeroed in on the seedier side of town. They drove slowly past pawn shops, porn shops, payday loan stores, laundromats, convenience stores, diners, motels and bars. Apparently Dean demanded much less maintenance than his car. Unasked, Ororo yanked several sheets of paper from Scott’s portfolio and sketched out the location of each motel and bar on a makeshift map.

Promptly at nine Scott stopped at the post office, but he collected nothing but a lot of head-shakes. Malcolm Young hadn’t stopped by – just as well, since his package hadn’t arrived yet.

Scott drove from the post office into the parking lot of a sad-looking motel called the Black Bear Inn, located on lower 1st Avenue, a couple of blocks from the on-ramp to U.S. 169. He turned off the engine. Ororo groaned, stretched and yawned. Her muscles ached from hours of sitting.

“Yeah, we should crash for the rest for the day.” Scott rubbed his stubbled face. “Gonna be a long night.”

He didn’t elaborate, and Ororo didn’t ask him to.

She was amused to discover that Scott had actually made a reservation. The front desk clerk took Scott’s card reluctantly. Obviously he thought Ororo was a prostitute. As if any man would use a credit card to commemorate his tryst with a hooker. She put a hand on Scott’s arm and he visibly throttled back. Ororo was so accustomed to confronting anti-mutant bigotry than the clerk’s display of good old-fashioned racism seemed quaint.

The water was hot and the pressure was good, even if the tile was cracked, the grout moldy and the tub stained with rust and lime. She came out of the bathroom wrapped in a threadbare towel to find Scott’s glasses and visor on the nightstand and Scott stripped down to his boxer-briefs, blindfolded and sleeping on top of the bed nearest the door. She stopped, and stared, and turned away. Pulled a tee and a pair of sweat pants out of her bag, put them on, and crawled under the blankets of the other bed.

She woke up hours later to the stink of heavily bleached sheets, the smell of coffee, the clank of a radiator and the sound of the running shower. Weak afternoon light filtered in from the parking lot through the blinds and the sound of traffic on Highway 169 was a distant buzz. She glanced at the clock next to the lamp; three o’clock. She supposed she was lucky to have slept six hours what with all the caffeine and ephedra she had consumed to stay awake the previous night. Not that she wasn’t going to sit up and help herself to one of the two paper cups of coffee on the nightstand, and something Minnesotans probably considered a bagel.

The shower shut off. A few moments later the bathroom door opened. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey.” Eyes closed, Scott walked around her bed, casually unwrapped the towel around his waist, dropped it onto his bed, and dug around in his duffle bag for fresh clothes. Ororo looked ceilingward. Obviously he didn’t even perceive her as being a female of the species anymore. Sometime during the Jean years she had been consigned to the category of Best Bud. How very fucking progressive.

“I went through the phone book. Collected any places we missed. This evening we check out the bars, and after midnight we check out the motel parking lots.”

She risked a glance in his direction. Jeans on, if unzipped, and he was pulling a long-sleeved thermal over his head. He put on a short-sleeved tee over that. It bore the words GIVE WAR A CHANCE, stenciled over a map of Iraq.

“Where in hell do you find those shirts?”

“Cafepress dot com. The largest selection of right-wing merchandise on the planet.”

“I think we’re going to have to install Net Nanny on your computer.”

He grinned, tucked the thermal and tee into the jeans, zipped up and buttoned up. He threaded a belt through the loops. How had she failed to notice that ridiculous buckle? The words were out of her mouth before she could think twice. “Did you steal that belt from Logan?”

His smile only momentarily faltered. “I always thought he swiped ’em from the WWE.”

Ororo awkwardly drained her coffee.

Scott picked up a flannel overshirt and put it on next. Lastly, he finger-combed his hair and scooped his glasses off the nightstand. He settled them on his nose and pulled the cords that secured the earpieces to his head. The ends of the cords dangled over the back of his shirt collar.

Belatedly it occurred to her that she ought to get dressed too. With a groan, she put the cup down on the rickety nightstand and slid out of bed. And hell, there was nothing she could or would do about the ginormous boobs bouncing freely under her tee. Fuck Scott Summers. She picked up her carryall and trudged into the bathroom.

Scott was sprawled on his bed studying his notes when she emerged fully dressed, having decided against giving a free show after all. But just to be a contrary bitch she had donned a tight, low-cut white tee mercifully free of tacky adornment. Scott made no comment on her choice of attire. He looked up and said merely, “Well, we have a few hours to kill. Whaddaya wanna do?”

Ororo heroically refrained from pointing out the most obvious activity a man and a woman could engage in while bunking together in a cheap motel. “Besides eat? I dunno, what do you wanna do?”

Scott grinned. “I dunno, what do you wanna do?”

Ororo rolled her eyes and fanned out the slick brochures she had found on the desktop. “Well, we could go see the Greyhound Bus Museum. Or we could drive over to Eveleth and see the World's Largest Hockey Stick and Puck.”

Scott’s lips twitched. Ororo thanked whatever gods might be that Scott found the unsubtle reference amusing. She didn’t pretend to understand the complicated shit between Scott and Logan; was merely thankful Logan had quickly and quietly left the mansion after Jean's death.

“Or, hmmm, there’s the Hull-Rust-Mahoning Open Pit Iron Mine, the world's largest open pit iron mine.”

“Doesn’t take much to amuse you.”

“I never said I wasn’t easy.” _Moving right along._ “Or. . . we could see the Bob Dylan exhibit at the public library. Son of a bitch, this is Bob Dylan’s hometown.”

So Scott pulled on a ball cap embroidered with a U.S. flag and the words OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM and they drove over to East 21st Street, where they strolled through the Bob Dylan exhibit until the library closed. They drove back down 1st Avenue and ate the earlybird special at the diner beside their motel. The other patrons stared at them; maybe they were staring at the white man and black woman dining together, maybe they were staring at her impressive cleavage, most likely they were staring at the druggie wearing his sunglasses indoors. Scott spared her his customary rant about the nutritional-industrial complex and ate his high-carb, high-fat meal in silence. He overtipped their teenage waitress, a girl with striped hair and multiple piercings who had made a point of chatting with them in friendly fashion. It was pitch dark by the time they walked through the parking lot of the Black Bear Inn to the convenience store on the other side and picked up some supplies, namely, more cups of coffee.

Pitch dark, but only six o’clock. She glanced at Scott. “Happy hour. Wanna get an early start?”

He shook his head, giving no explanation. She nodded and did not press. They had built up a huge reservoir of mutual trust over the past ten years, something the new members of their suddenly expanded team alternately respected and resented.

So they sat on the Mustang, backs against the windshield and legs sprawled out over the hood. Ororo huddled into her layers of fleece and down and gortex; all the years in New York hadn’t thickened her blood any. Scott didn’t reach into the glove box and exchange his glasses for his visor, although she was sure he was tempted. She knew his eyesight was impaired by the dark film adhering to the ruby-quartz lenses of his faux Oakleys. The film kept the lenses from glowing but really fucked with his night vision. The visor wasn't an option, though, not unless he wanted to panic the locals. The visor was an intensely practical prosthetic but had the unfortunate side effect of making Scott look like an old-school Cylon.

They sat and talked desultorily, mostly school business. They watched the cars drive in and out of the parking lots in front of the diner, the motel, and the gas station-cum-convenience store. They watched the traffic on 1st Avenue dwindle away. Rush hour in Hibbing lasted about forty-five minutes. Ororo sipped her coffee and wondered what they were watching for.

Around seven o’clock a battered pickup slowed and skewed to a halt inside the parking lot of the Black Bear Inn. The driver’s-side door swung open, and a man stepped out. A not-particularly-tall but powerfully-built man with a full, neatly trimmed beard and mustache. He pulled a heavy sheepskin coat around his chest and settled a Stetson over his crewcut hair. Ororo stared as the man walked forward into the illumination provided by the sodium arc lights of the gas station next door.

“Glad you could join us,” Scott said calmly.

Logan shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. He glanced at her – no love lost on either side, there – and turned his intense brown eyes in Scott’s direction.

Ororo thought: _Oh fuckety fuck fuck._

____________________  


If she had needed any confirmation that Dean Winchester was an extraordinarily dangerous alpha-class mutant, it would have been the fact that Scott had felt driven to recruit Logan for the mission. Who even knew the son of a bitch would hang on to his team phone?

They stood over Scott’s bed in the motel room and looked down at the two maps of the town and surrounding area. Scott had at some time marked up each one with the locations of likely bars, budget motels and garages.

“We’re not talking fern bars,” Scott was saying.

Logan nodded. He raised his head and surveyed the small room. His gaze lingered on the sight of her belongings intermingled with Scott’s on the dresser, and he shot her a coolly insolent look. Determined to match Scott’s own professional demeanor, she resisted the urge to smack him.

“We check out the bars till two. Then we check out the motels till seven. Post office at nine.” Scott rolled up one map and handed it to Logan. “We’ll take the north and east, you take the south and west. If you see the Impala, don’t engage. Wait for us.”

Logan looked at his own color printout of the Impala and grunted. His silence nonplussed Ororo. She was used to a Logan who obeyed no order without a lot of backtalk and bullshit. He’d stop the charge up San Juan Hill to argue with Teddy Roosevelt.

Scott pulled on his fleece liner and jacket and picked up the other map. Ororo got re-dressed for the great outdoors. Logan had never taken off his jacket, or even his stupid cowboy hat.

Neither she nor Scott asked Logan any questions about where he had been. Nor did they ask him why he had left the mansion in the first place; Scott probably supposed that Jean's death meant Logan had no more reason to hang around, and Ororo already knew the real reason for his departure. As to why Logan had come to Hibbing, guilt, she supposed; a desire to make amends to Scott. Logan had certainly never expressed any desire to make amends to Ororo.

As they walked out the door Scott pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to Logan. A stamped postcard.

“Send Rogue a postcard,” he said. He walked past Logan to the Mustang without waiting for a reply and got into the shotgun seat.

Ororo glanced at the inscrutable expression on Logan’s face as she slid into the driver's seat.

About an hour later, as they rounded a corner onto 26th Street, Scott’s team phone buzzed.

____________________  


“So which one of ’em is the mutant?”

“I can make an educated guess. Don’t know for sure.” Scott shrugged. “They’re brothers. And they’re living in each other’s pockets.”

Logan shifted his legs under the small table and knocked Scott’s white cane over. He stooped, picked it up and pressed it into Scott’s hand, mumbling something that might have been an apology.

He had been clearly taken aback to see Scott emerge from the Mustang with the cane. Scott could and did tuck Ororo’s arm under his and allow her to lead him through the bar's dirt parking lot, up the rickety wooden stairs, past a curious audience to a vacant table close by the door. The cane was a particularly good theater prop. A guy who wore sunglasses at night needed a way to fend off the questions. And in a strange way it gave Scott the upper hand. People were nervous around a blind guy. Some kind of superstitious fear. At the same time they lowered their guard around him. Having been forced to live blind for nearly a year of his young life, Scott could play the role only too well.

So no one questioned Scott’s glasses. There had also been a distinct lack of loudly voiced questions and comments about the black bitch with the big rack. She didn’t know if the local yokels hadn’t picked a fight because they didn’t have the heart to punch a blind Iraq War veteran, or because Logan managed to look menacing when he was just sitting there breathing.

And she was beginning to think Scott had got it wrong about Dean Winchester’s preference for blondes. Maybe he just preferred anything in a double-D cup. He had shot her several covert looks, smiling winningly when she finally turned her head to acknowledge one of them.

Dean Winchester was a good-looking son of a bitch. Old-fashioned masculine good looks, late-night movie looks, the guy who gets paired up with Audrey Hepburn or Lauren Bacall. A 1940s face, strong nose, chisled jaw, dimpled chin. Dark hair close-cropped in a military style. Funny-colored eyes. He was of average height and solidly built, well-developed biceps and triceps evident under long sleeves, muscular thighs straining worn jeans. Flat belly – he wouldn’t have that much longer if he didn’t cut back on the beer and the bar food. Killer smile. Infectious laugh. Dean Winchester radiated ease and good humor. He had ingratiated himself with no effort into the hardscrabble crowd. If she didn’t know better she would have pegged him for uncomplicated good ol’ boy with nothing more on his mind than hooking up for the night.

Ororo turned her attention to Sam Winchester. Sam Winchester was ... a big kid. A really big kid. Six-five, she figured. Long arms and legs, big hands and feet, broad chest, wide shoulders. He made his brother look petite. Sam Winchester ought to have been a scary bastard. However, he appeared to have reinvented himself as the world’s biggest nebbish. He hunched his huge frame over a laptop as though he were in a school library instead of a biker bar along West 169 in Hibbing, Minnesota. Occasionally he consulted a fat notebook stuffed with clippings, or studied the local paper as though he were going to be tested on its contents in the morning. Sam wasn’t leading-man handsome like his brother, but he wasn’t ugly, either. He looked like one of those insufferably cute characters in a Japanese cartoon, with a narrow, angular, sensitive face and unkempt hair flopping over soulful brown eyes.

Ororo settled back in her chair, sipped her beer and watched Dean work the room. Dean was a busy guy. He shot pool with a few wannabe Hell’s Angels. He threw darts with a few others. He won some money, apparently not enough to piss anyone off. He propped himself against the bar for a while and flirted with several girls and ended up dancing with a couple of them – at the same time – to the country music with which the juke box was programmed.

But every few minutes he turned his head in his brother’s direction. And maybe every ten minutes he drifted back to the little table and shoved Sam’s shoulder or tapped his back or said something to earn a glare or an eye roll or a tired smile.

“That Dean guy,” she said. “Keeping a real close eye on his brother. A real close eye.”

Scott nodded. “And Sam acts like he’s afraid to talk to anyone. Barmaid tried to talk to him, and a couple of girls. He blew them all off. Wouldn’t even make eye contact. Pretty much what I was expecting.” He put down his glass. “I think Sam is being held against his will.”

Logan said, “He’s a big motherfucker.” The customary belligerence was absent in his voice.

Scott shook his head. “I think we’re going to find that Dean has an undue amount of influence over Sam, I mean, more than a brother’s influence. Sam’s mother died when he was a baby and his father was a traveling salesman. No other relatives, at least none who stepped in to help. Looks to me like Dean must’ve raised Sam. And – I suppose it would be hard to turn against someone you think of as a father.”

Ororo prepared herself to kick Logan. Now was not the time to berate Scott for his ludicrous attachment to Erik Lehnsherr, terrorist extraordinaire. Logan, however, said nothing. He simply continued to focus his uncomfortably intent gaze on Scott.

Scott spoke more briskly. “And enough of the psychoanalyzing. Most likely he’s just too scared of Dean to make a run for it.”

“Yeah?” Logan drawled. “What’s so scary about Dino?”

“Dean Winchester is wanted for murder. He’s the prime suspect in a string of home invasions in St. Louis. Always the same M.O., broke in while the men were out, raped and tortured the women. Tortured a woman named Emily Johnson to death. He was finally shot and killed by one of his would-be victims, Rebecca Warren.”

Ororo stared at Scott and transferred her stare to the Winchesters, who were currently engaged in a boisterious conversation with a couple of locals. Or rather, Dean was laughing loudly and waving his arms around; Sam seemed considerably less enthused.

“Shot and killed,” Logan repeated. He narrowed his eyes. “He heals up like me?”

“I don’t know. Somehow he managed to fake his own death and get away. The cops in St. Louis still think he’s buried in potter’s field.”

 _Well, fuck._ Ororo glanced discreetly across the bar. “What about Sam Winchester?”

“Some parking tickets, some speeding tickets. No high school diploma, just a GED, he was mostly home-schooled, presumably by Dean. But he got a perfect 1600 on his SATs. Got into Stanford University on three different scholarships for need and merit. Four point oh average. His professors loved him. Everybody loved him. He was on the short list for Stanford Law School, with another scholarship offer on the table. Night before his law school interview, there was a two-alarm fire in his apartment building. Started in his apartment, in his bedroom. No apparent cause. A girl named Jessica Moore died. His live-in girlfriend.”

“Shit. Not another pyro.”

“Well, maybe Sam’s pyrokinetic. Maybe he lost control of his powers and accidentally burned the place down. I could believe that.” Scott picked up his glass and rolled it between his palms. “What I can’t believe is that Sam Winchester would disembowel his girlfriend first. And then throw her against the ceiling of their bedroom so hard her body got embedded in the support beams.”

Ororo rolled a sip of beer around in her mouth and swallowed.

“You won’t find those details in the official report. The detective in charge of the investigation – well, I won’t go through the whole six degrees of separation bullshit – he called Charles.” Scott swallowed a mouthful of Coke. “So for the past nine months I’ve been on the trail of a telekinetic, pyrokinetic mutant. Guess who was in Palo Alto that night visiting his little brother?”

Ororo finished her glass of beer in silence. Relative silence. She ignored the music, the loud laughter and conversation, the clack of balls from the pool table, the shouts from the bar where men were following a college hockey game on a large-screen TV. She glanced sideways. Dean Winchester was throwing darts again, a pastime which positioned him less than five feet from the tiny round table at which his brother sat. Dean was grinning to himself. Sam Winchester sat with his head bowed, shadows pooled around his eyes. He looked tired and unwell.

Kugel’s Keg being the last bastion of smokers’ rights, Logan took out a cigar. He cut the tip, lit up, and said, “Why’d it take nearly a year to run this sumbitch down?”

He didn’t speak aggressively. Scott didn’t answer defensively. “Well, thanks to William Stryker, the Cerebro’s been out of commission. So I was tracking Dean the old-fashioned way. Not very successfully. He always uses fake IDs and fraudulent credit cards. And he keeps moving. He travels hundreds of miles every week. He can travel a thousand miles a week, easy. He’s like Johnny Cash, he’s been everywhere. And then one day I read in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Dean Winchester was dead. And I stopped looking.”

Scott looked into his glass a moment before he resumed speaking. “Hank and Kitty got the Cerebro up and running again last week, just in time for Charles to detect a lot of telekinetic activity in Saginaw, Michigan. Three deaths. Jim Miller, Roger Miller and Max Miller. Three people killed telekinetically.” Scott smiled humorlessly. “I talked to Alice Miller. Guess who was in town when her husband and brother-in-law died? And he was right in the damn _house_ when her son died. Not that she blames Dean. She’s got a crush on Dean. Jesus.”

Logan snorted. Ororo felt a moment’s embarrassment on behalf of womankind.

Scott put his glass down. The bottom of the glass struck the tabletop with unnecessary force. “We’ve got to nail this guy now. We lose Dean here, we may not catch up with him again till he’s murdered someone else.”

Logan appeared to consider this. He drew on his cigar, tilted his head back and blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling rather than into Scott’s face. He must have picked up some rudimentary manners in the Northwest Territories or wherever the hell he had been. He lowered his chin and said around the cigar, “Whadday mean, ‘nail this guy’? Ya mean you’re gonna call the cops in St. Louis?”

“No. The cops can’t handle him. That’s why the detective in Palo Alto called us in the first place. This is our kind of problem.” Scott spoke flatly. “I’m going to put him down. That’s what I came here to do.”

Logan reflected behind an expressionless mask. He didn’t scoff or make wisecracks about overgrown Boy Scouts. Ororo bowed her head and studied the cuts in the tabletop. It occurred to her she didn’t know Scott as well as she thought. Neither Scott nor Charles. Scott's mind was an open book to the old man – if Scott planned murder, Charles must be well aware and silently acquiescing.

“So what exactly are ya gonna do?”

Scott touched his glasses. “I’m going to look at him.”

Ororo raised her head and stared directly into the ruby-quartz lenses. She said quietly and firmly, “What do you need me to do?”

Scott didn’t smile. A smile under these circumstances would have been macabre. He simply inclined his head in grateful acknowledgement. “Backup. I’ll only get one shot at this. I’ve got nothing but the element of surprise on my side. If I fuck up, he’s got me. And I need you not to save me. I need you to electrocute him while he’s busy.”

“That’s not gonna kill him,” Logan murmured. “Wouldn’t kill me.”

“But it’ll hurt him. It’ll stop him for a few moments. That’s all the time you’ve got to cut off his head. Even you couldn’t come back from that.”

They sat silently together, the noise of the bar bouncing off them as though they were under glass.

"Damn, this place stinks," Logan muttered unexpectedly.

Scott looked meaningfully at Logan's smoldering cigar and opened his mouth. Ororo interrupted. “What the hell are those two talking about, anyway?”

Logan tilted his head, like a dog. A look of concentration appeared on his face. “A dark figure comes out at night. Grabs people and vanishes.” He paused. “This county has more missing persons per capita than anywhere else in the state.” He paused again. “I don’t know if this is our kind of gig.”

Scott swore under his breath. “He’s planning something.”

Logan mashed out his cigar on the scarred wooden tabletop. He cut off the tip and stowed what was left back inside his jacket. “What’s our next move?”

“We follow them back to their motel. Park the Mustang by the Impala. Whenever Dean leaves his room he’s going to see her and he’s going to stop and talk cars. I tell him I got blinded by an IED in Iraq and the car’s for sale. I offer to let him take a test drive out to the state park. It’s further down West 169.”

“You think he’ll get in the Mustang with three strangers?”

“Two strangers. He won't be afraid of me. I'm just a blind man. He won't be afraid of Ro. She's just a girl. You....” Scott smiled faintly. “Stay out of sight. Follow us in your truck.”

“What about Sam?”

“Take him back to the Institute, if he’ll come with us. I don’t want Sam Winchester joining the Friends of Humanity. We need to help him, if he’ll accept our help. I want him to know all mutants aren’t like Dean.”

“Hey.” Logan inclined his head in the Winchesters’ direction.

Sam had gotten to his feet. He closed his laptop and pushed it into a satchel. He picked up the fat notebook and and the newspaper and tucked them under one arm.

Dean picked up his jacket and sauntered off in the direction of the men’s room.

Sam turned around and threaded his way between the tables and knots of customers to the exit.

“The fuck?” Logan looked at his watch. “It’s only nine-thirty.”

Scott rose swiftly to his feet. Ororo started to stand and Scott shook his head.

“I want to talk to Sam. Stay here and stall Dean as long as you can.” He picked up the cane and tap-tapped his way to the door. The vermin infesting Kugel’s Keg moved promptly out of his path. _Well, God bless America,_ Ororo thought.

She and Logan looked at each other. Logan stood up, walked to the dartboard and started pulling the darts free of the cork. Ororo picked up her glass and the pitcher of beer, slid onto the stool Sam had just vacated and set the pitcher down.

Dean strolled out of the restroom.

 _Show time._ She folded her arms on the table and leaned forward, displaying her cleavage to best advantage.

Logan intercepted him. “Hey, bub.” He held up a handful of darts. “Lookin’ for a game?”

Dean smiled and shook his head. “Nah, my ride’s out front.”

“C’mon.” Logan waved a twenty.

“Some other time.” Dean walked around Logan and stopped dead. He stared unabashedly down the neck of Ororo’s tee.

She smiled her best come-hither smile and poured some beer into his empty glass. Dean hesitated for all of three seconds.

“Just tell me that guy isn’t your boyfriend.” He slung himself onto the stool opposite hers and jerked his thumb at Logan.

“He’s not.”

“And he knows that, right?”

She leaned forward and murmured, “He’s gay.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Him and that blind guy?”

“Yep.”

“So why the hell are you hanging with them?”

“Waitin’ for you, darlin’.” Ororo took a sip. "Call me Ro."

“Rose? Dean.” He made a comical face and shook his head. “God, you don’t know how much I wanna stick around.”

“So stick around.”

“My brother. He’s already outside waiting for me in the car.”

“It’s not even ten o’clock.”

“Yeah, what can I tell ya, he’s a loser.”

“Tell him to go on home. I’ll give you a lift.” She smiled again. “But I may not take you home till morning.”

 _He shoots, he scores._ Ororo didn’t even need telepathy to hear that. Dean reached under his flannel, unclipped a cell from his belt and hit the speed dial, while Ororo repressed the urge to slap the smug smile right off his handsome face.

“Aw, fer God’s sake, Sammy,” he growled, moments later. “Answer your damn phone.”

Finally Dean folded his cell and stowed it away. “Shit. Look, lemme go outside and let him know, okay? Swear I’ll be back in three minutes. Okay?”

Assuming a thoughtful expression, Ororo stirred the beer in her glass with her index finger. She raised her hand, slid her finger into her mouth and slowly sucked it clean.

Dean muttered an obscenity, grabbed his jacket and all but fell off the stool. “Two minutes. I swear.”

As soon as his back was turned she yanked out her team phone and punched the speed dial. Logan strode forward and leaned his palms against the table.

“Timetable’s moved up,” she said. “He’s getting in the Mustang with me in five, ten minutes. You take Scott in your truck. Follow us. I need directions to this state park. Shit, Scott, answer your phone.”

“He ain’t a mutie.”

“What?”

“Dean Winchester.” Logan tapped the side of his nose. “He ain’t a mutie.”

Ororo felt as though she had just swallowed a bucketful of ice cubes. Without another word she leaped to her feet, knocking the stool over. She heard Logan jogging heavily behind her as she ran to the exit, shoved through the door and jumped down the wooden steps to the dirt parking lot.

“Scott!” she screamed. “Scott!”

As if in response, she heard someone shout, “Sam!”

She whirled and grabbed Logan’s arm “You search the woods around the bar. I’ll go through the parking lot.”

She found the Impala, unlocked and empty. She found the Mustang, locked. She opened it and checked the glove box; Scott’s visor was still there next to her purse.

She looked around and inside every one of the cars and pickups parked haphazardly in the dirt lot. She talked to the men hanging around the entrance to the bar. They were exceedingly drunk and surprisingly kind. Yeah, they’d seen the blind guy, a veteran, right? Yeah, they’d seen him walk by but they hadn’t noticed where he'd gone.

As a last resort she jogged across Highway 169 and searched through the tall grass along the side of the road. Every few moments she heard someone yell “Sam!” Dean Winchester’s voice.

When she jogged back across the highway she found Logan leaning against the pole of the sodium arc light in front of the bar. He shook his head and held up an Iridium satellite cell phone. A team phone. Ororo knew without asking that it was Scott's phone. She felt almost dizzy with horror.

Sam. Sam the model student, Sam the upstanding citizen. Sam was the mutant. Sam was the psycho. Sam had completely turned the tables on them.

Sam Winchester had Scott.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean Winchester was trying to talk to a man and woman who were both clearly too drunk to drive but climbed into their pickup anyway after brushing him off. He stood in the middle of the dirt lot surrounding Kugel’s Keg, shivering in his leather jacket, looking frustrated and not a little desperate.

Ororo strode through the haphazardly parked cars and trucks toward Dean, Logan looming behind her like a scary shadow. Dean saw her approaching and veered off to meet her halfway. “Hey, wasn’t trying to ditch you, it’s my brother, I can’t –”

Logan grabbed Dean, hoisted him up off his feet and threw him down onto the hood of a battered old Dodge. 

To Ororo’s surprise, Dean recovered almost immediately and tried to roll off the car. Logan caught him, slammed him down again and leaned across his body. Logan weighed about three hundred pounds; the adamantium reinforcing his skeleton accounted for a third of that, and muscle mass accounted for most of the rest. Dino wasn’t going any-damn-where. 

“Goddammit!” Dean turned his head and glared at Ororo. “She said she wasn’t your girlfriend!”

“She isn’t.” Logan’s voice was low and level. “Now where the hell is Scott?”

Dean struggled to extricate himself. “I don’t know anybody named Scott.”

“Sure ya do. Guy I was drinking with? Guy with the sunglasses? That’s Scott.” Logan shifted, pressed his crotch against Dean’s and rocked forward. Ororo was slightly troubled to realize she couldn’t muster up any shocked disapproval. Sexual intimidation might prove particularly effective against a ladies’ man like Dean Winchester.

Oh, yeah, Logan had the bastard’s attention now. Dean tensed; his eyes narrowed. “I got no damn idea where your boyfriend is. But if this is your idea of foreplay, no wonder he bugged out on you.”

“Where’s your brother?” Ororo got in Dean’s face. “Where’d he go? Where’d he take Scott?” 

“I don’t know what –”

“Don’t fuck with me. Scott went outside right after your brother did. And now they’re both MIA. _Where are they?”_

“My brother never hurt anyone. And he sure as hell never hurt a blind guy.” Dean hesitated. “I’m thinking somebody jumped your friend and Sam tried to help him.”

Logan lifted Dean slightly and banged him down again. The back of Dean’s head connected with the hood of the car. Hard. “This ain’t no mugging. I searched back in the woods, all around the bar, didn’t find Scott, didn’t find nobody.” 

Ororo glanced around. The men still clustered around the stairs to the bar were apathetically watching Logan thump Dean. Clearly parking lot brawls were too common at Kugel’s Keg to rouse much interest, but one of the men was bound to amble back inside eventually and mention it to the bartender, who might feel obliged to mention it to the manager, who might feel obliged to call the cops. 

“We have to take him somewhere else,” she murmured. Ororo considered and immediately rejected the motel she and Scott had checked into. The Black Bear Inn was a dump but it was on a well-traveled street and bookended by a diner and a busy gas station. 

Logan seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion. “Passed a motel about five miles back on 169. Nothing around but trees, couple of cars out front.”

“That’ll do.”

“Pull his belt off, get his feet with that. Use my belt for his hands.”

“I’m telling ya, man, you’re making a mistake. C’mon, we’re losing time. We need to be looking for them, not fucking around like this.” 

“Shut up before I bite your dick off.”

Ororo wormed her hands between their bellies and unbuckled their belts. Dean didn’t resist as she restrained him, in the process relieving him of his car keys, wallet, cell phone, a razor-sharp knife in an ankle holster, another knife in a wrist holster, and a handgun tucked into the front of his jeans. 

When she was finished, Logan rolled Dean off the hood and smacked him down into the hard-packed dirt between the Dodge and another car. He shucked off his flannel shirt and crouched down, grabbing the belts strapped around Dean’s wrists and ankles. “Use one of those knives to slice up my shirt. Then tie these belts together.” 

Dean breathed harshly as he was hog-tied but made no other sound. He hadn’t yelled for help before and he wasn’t yelling now, and she doubted machismo had anything to do with it. The boys at Kugel’s Keg had shown a considerable amount of courtesy toward a supposedly blind Iraq War veteran, but she didn’t think any of them would lift a finger to help an able-bodied out-of-towner. Maybe Dean had arrived at the same conclusion, or maybe he just preferred taking his chances with two violent strangers instead of the cops. Considering Dean’s colorful history, Ororo inclined toward the latter theory. 

When she was finished they rolled him over, picked him up and carried him between the skewed rows of cars to the other end of the parking lot. Dean’s unfastened leather jacket flapped loosely over his torso, obfuscating the view of his restrained extremities. Not that Ororo expected anyone to sprint to his rescue, but they didn’t need to leave the locals with an unnecessarily exciting story to tell. 

They dumped Dean down on the ground next to the Impala and Logan held out his hand to her. “Gimme the keys. You take the Mustang. Ain’t nobody gonna steal my truck.” His mouth quirked slightly. 

The small display of self-deprecating humor startled Ororo, enough that she fished Dean’s key ring out of her jacket pocket and handed it over without a word. Logan opened the back door of the Impala, slammed it shut again and stumbled back. 

Fairly astonished, Ororo grabbed at his arm. “What?”

Logan jerked away from her. In a low, angry voice, he muttered, “Fucking stinks in there.”

“Now this is just too goddamn much.” Dean raised his head. “You can talk smack about me and my brother, but you leave my baby out of this.”

Ororo looked from Logan to Dean to the car. Pausing to imagine all the revolting possibilities, she gritted her teeth and opened the door again. 

No foul stench rushed out of the Impala. None that she could detect. Ororo cranked down every window, turned on the overhead light and explored the interior of the car thoroughly. She found nothing to account for Logan’s reaction. No animal carcasses or people parts, thank God. Rubbing the seats and carpets with a scrap of Logan’s shirt didn’t reveal any fresh blood. She found a battery-powered radio under the front seat, the kind of radio that picked up TV stations and the National Weather Service. She found an issue of the Hibbing Daily Tribune and a three-ring binder on the front seat, and she recognized the binder as the notebook Sam had been perusing in the bar. She flipped it open, squinted at the messy handwriting and decided to put it aside until she was someplace with better lighting. 

Dropping the notebook, she turned her attention to the winter coats and backpacks in the rear seat. Nothing unusual in the pockets of the coats. The packs contained nothing of interest. Shaving kits, fresh clothes, small first aid kits, bottles of water, bags of jerky and power bars. 

She backed out of the car and bumped into Logan. He was staring fixedly into the interior of the car and breathing shallowly. 

“I didn’t find anything in there.”

Logan didn’t respond. Instead, he pushed past her, reached into the back seat and hauled out one of the coats. He buried his face in its collar and inhaled. 

“Fuck.” Logan hurled the coat aside. He leaned forward, put his hands on his knees and gagged. Ororo stared. She would have patted the back or shoulder of anyone else. 

Finally, Logan straightened and turned toward her. She couldn’t decipher the expression on his face.

He said, “You gonna call Charles?”

“Yes. Of course. Logan....” 

No. Not the time or place for questions. Not with Dean watching and listening, obviously as confused as she was. 

So she said, “Let’s get outta here.”

Together they stuffed Dean into the back seat, because tossing him into the trunk might have been more than even the patrons of Kugel’s Keg could ignore. Settling into the driver’s seat, Logan looked over his shoulder. “Gimme any trouble, boy, and you’re gonna be the next General Motors crash test dummy.” 

Dean didn’t reply, possibly too shocked by the implicit threat to his car.

Ororo watched the Impala angle right out of the parking lot and head west on 169. Only when the car’s taillights had receded into the distance did she allow herself to slump weakly against a parked truck. Scott was missing. Scott was missing _again,_ less than a year after the debacle in Alberta. And putting her own feelings aside, she didn’t know how she would break the news to Charles. The old man was barely recovered from Jean’s death; losing Scott would finish him off. 

What the hell? Was she already thinking of Scott in the past tense? She would find him, goddammit. She would figure out what Sam had done with him. Mr. Stanford University was not going to beat her City College ass. 

Ororo straightened up and determinedly organized her thoughts. She needed to read Sam’s notebook. Probably nothing but a lot of demented ramblings, but she needed to read it, she needed to comb it for clues. She needed to go through Scott’s portfolio as well. She needed to drive to the Black Bear Inn, collect the portfolio and the rest of Scott’s belongings, and her own, and check out. Tiredly she rubbed at her eyes. It occurred to Ororo that her contacts were killing her, her wig was driving her berserk and she was freezing. She needed to retrieve all their coats which were still hanging over the backs of their chairs in the damn bar.

Coats.... She stooped and retrieved the coat Logan had thrown aside. Extra long, extra large – Sam’s, obviously. Hesitantly she sniffed at the collar. She detected nothing but the faint, pleasant scent of an aftershave. Ororo knew better than to question Logan’s abilities, but she wondered. She wondered mightily.

Overhead a half-moon momentarily broke free of the heavy cloud cover obscuring most of the night sky. Ororo automatically noted the increasing moisture content of the atmosphere as she tucked Sam’s coat under one arm. Turning, she stopped and tensed at the sight of a suspicious-looking lump on the patch of dirt the Impala had just vacated. She stooped again, picked up a chunk of gravel and tossed it lightly in the lump’s direction. It didn’t scuttle away. Well, she’d accomplished nothing else, but she’d discovered what had spooked Logan.

But it wasn’t the carcass of a skunk or fox or feral cat. It was a faux-leather messenger bag. Sam Winchester had walked out of Kugel’s Keg less than an hour ago with a similar bag over his shoulder.

Ororo knelt in the dirt and opened the bag. She recognized Sam’s distinctively stickered laptop immediately. A mil-spec satellite laptop, its satellite card removed and wrapped in a lead-impregnated lining. A Blue Tooth USB and a Palm Treo, also wrapped in a lead lining. A modest little TracFone in a cheap vinyl case – one of those terrorist specials, an untraceable pre-paid cell available at any Wal-Mart. Well, that answered some questions she’d been meaning to ask Scott.

She repacked the bag, slung it over her shoulder and stood up. She fished Scott’s Iridium out of her pocket and looked at it for a moment. Then she took a deep breath, flipped it open and punched the button for Charles Xavier's private line.

______________________

Surrounded on three sides by thick woods, feebly illuminated by faux lanterns affixed to each door, the Spurs N Lace was apparently the no-tell motel of the county. Not many travelers would check into a run-down establishment located miles from the nearest gas station, convenience store, bar, restaurant or on-ramp. 

Three cars were parked in the graveled lot. The two with local plates were parked in front of the last room on the left. The one with Kansas plates was parked by the last room on the right. Ororo parked the Mustang near the Impala and got out.

The Impala’s trunk was open and the blacktop around the old Chevy was littered with paraphernalia. A comprehensive roadside repair kit. A spare tire. Two Army surplus duffel bags and a couple of sub-zero sleeping bags. Packets of freeze-dried Mountain House meals, gallons of water, flares, tow rope, chains, a pair of shovels, cowhide gloves, sacks of rock salt. A winter survival kit. Nothing that would raise any cop’s eyebrows.

“Something in one of the duffels?” she asked.

“Probably.” Logan took a maglite out of his pocket. He snapped it on, stuck it between his teeth and focused the beam inside the now-empty trunk. Ororo watched as Logan peeled away the cheap indoor-outdoor carpeting and felt carefully along the flooring with his fingertips. Before she could ask another question he grunted and threw back the edge of a false bottom. 

Shotguns. Handguns. Machetes. Axes. All meticulously cleaned and oiled, shining in the glow of the maglite. Not a speck of dirt or rust or blood. Some of the weapons were strapped to the underneath of the false bottom, some were stored in custom-fitted cases next to boxes of ammunition. A paramedic’s kit, and two black zippered carryalls, filled the rest of the concealed space. Ororo stared dumbfounded at the armory inside the cavernous trunk.

Logan took the maglite out of his mouth. “Smelled the gun oil.” He paused, not long enough to make his next question seem casual. “You talk to Charles?”

“Yeah. The Cerebro’s down again.” 

“Fuckin’ thing was working last week.”

“Yeah, and it’s not working this week.” She turned around and squatted down by one of Army duffel bags. That conversation with Charles was not something she wished to dwell on. “Guess we’re doing this the old-fashioned way.”

The duffel bags contained cheap sneakers and boots and clothes. Underwear and socks, long johns, well-worn jeans and T-shirts and flannels, vests and jackets. Everything had that secondhand Salvation Army thrift store look. All the clothing was neatly and tightly rolled military-style and smelled of off-brand laundry detergent, the kind that came in boxes bought for a quarter in a laundromat.

A cheap tin box slipped out of a sweatshirt, bounced off the gravel and broke open, spilling its contents. Ororo squatted and quickly realized she was gathering up a photo collection. Old faded photos, family photos. Notes were inscribed on the back of each in a woman’s handwriting. _Dean’s 3rd birthday. Sammy the day we brought him home._

Ororo’s anger reignited at the images of infant Sam and his smiling parents. A goddamn _serial killer_ had baby photos, but she didn’t. Neither she nor Scott had salvaged a single family photo from the wreckage of their lives, unless she counted the pictures of their young selves posing with Charles and his then-lover Erik. Anger was overtaken by shame as she realized that after all the years, all the effort Charles had made, and yes, Erik too, she still didn’t think of them as parents. Hastily she shoved the photos back into the tin box, the box back into the duffel, and began digging through the carryalls.

The black carryalls smelled strongly of dry cleaning chemicals and contained a lightweight traveler’s iron, a can of spray starch, a handheld steamer, white button-down shirts, ties, wingtips, dark business suits, dark overcoats. And uniforms. Paramedic, cop, firefighter. Repairman’s coveralls. Generic brown uniforms that might belong to a park ranger or a state trooper or a UPS driver. And, incredibly, a couple of priests’ cassocks, complete with clerical collars. 

A lockbox fell out of an unrolled set of white scrubs. Logan popped a claw, sliced it open and dumped it out on the gravel. Ororo crouched and stirred the pile of badges. FBI, DHS, FEMA, CDC, DEA, FAA, EPA, CBP. Dozens of ID badges, from the federal to the county level. Dozens of driver’s licenses and health insurance cards and credit cards, in a dizzying variety of names.

Ororo scooped them all up and stuffed them back into the box. She said, “I’ve got something to show you, too.”

After they had repacked the trunk and locked it, Ororo spread the contents of the messenger bag across the hood of the car. Logan picked up the Palm Treo. “Where?”

“Under the Impala. Saw it after you drove off.”

“Looks pricy.”

“It is. So’s the laptop.”

“And Scott’s phone. Sam just threw away all this expensive shit.”

Ororo wondered when Logan had begun calling Scott _Scott_ instead of “Summers” or any one of a dozen insulting nicknames. “Yeah. Now there’s no chance of tracking them by the GPS receivers.”

“I mean why not lock it all up in the trunk?” Logan reached through the open window of the Impala and grabbed the three-ring binder off the front seat. “He puts this thing nice and safe inside the car but he leaves all the high-tech gizmos in the dirt?”

Ororo refrained from smacking herself in the forehead. “That is weird.”

“Whole thing’s weird. Why didn’t Cyke just nuke him?”

“His visor’s still in the Mustang. And anyway, he thought Sam was the innocent victim. And the son of a bitch got the drop on him.” 

Logan was silent a moment. “Well, we got the drop on Dino.”

Yes. They had Dean. Dean, who had raised Sam. Dean, who was everything to Sam – brother, father, mother. Ororo felt a smile forming on her face. She wondered if it was as scary-looking as the smile on Logan’s.

The stink of old cigarette smoke wafted across the threshold as Logan pushed open the motel room door. Ororo stepped into what appeared to be a frontier bordello, all red-flocked wallpaper, long mirrors and beaded lamps. No longer hogtied, Dean was instead spread-eagled on a stripped-down king-sized mattress, his wrists and ankles restrained to the bedframe with torn sheets. He started talking the moment Logan turned the key in the lock.

“Look, man, my brother did not run away with your boyfriend, cuz first of all, he’s not gay, and if he was gay I’d know, cuz I just know that kinda shit, and anyway he woulda told me he was goin’ someplace and he woulda asked me for a couple of rubbers and the goddamn _car.”_ Dean paused to suck in a breath. “You think they’re bangin’ each other out in the woods? Cuz I gotta tell you, that is not my brother’s style. He is not exactly the Nature Boy, know what I mean? He’s all wussy about ticks and poison ivy and –”

“They didn’t go into the woods around the bar,” Logan said flatly. “They didn't leave on foot. Somebody’s gonna be reporting a stolen car tonight.” 

Ororo gritted her teeth. The cops could certainly locate a stolen car faster than she and Logan could. But no cop could survive a roadside encounter with Sam. A cop killing. Another mutant atrocity. More impetus to pass the Mutant Registration Act. Ororo felt almost bent double under the pressure. The X-Men _had_ to find Sam first. 

She swung the messenger bag off her shoulder and dumped it out on the mattress next to Dean’s head “Well, obviously Sam doesn’t expect you to call him.” She fished Dean’s cell out of her pocket. “But I bet he’ll be calling you. So here’s what you say when he calls. You for Scott. Simple, huh?”

Dean turned his head and stared at the laptop and cell phones arrayed on the bare mattress. “Where’d you find that computer? It wasn’t in the car.”

Ororo ignored him. She picked up the laptop and carried it to the bistro table in what was presumably the “breakfast nook,” although she doubted anyone had ever stayed past sunrise at the Spurs N Lace. The breakfast nook had no coffeepot, no toaster and no microwave, but it did boast a drinks fridge. She unplugged it before plugging in the laptop and hitting the power button. 

“Sam loves that goddamn computer. You’d have to chop off his hands to get it away from him.” Dean glared at Logan. 

“It was under the car. Where Sam left it for you to find. Guess that’s your routine, huh?”

“No way. No way in hell. He would never just leave it lying out in the dirt. And his journal was out on top of the trunk. Somebody jumped him.”

“Ya mean this thing?” Logan held up the three-ring binder. “It was on the front seat.”

“Cuz I put it there. It was on top of the trunk. And he’d never leave his notes just lying around. He thinks he’s the next Stephen King, that’s all the notes for his book.”

Jesus H. Christ. _A book._ The psychotic son of a bitch was writing a _book._ Was he already in contact with Judith Regan? Was Tom Cruise already signed up for the movie? 

Ororo resisted the urge to immediately take Logan’s cigar lighter to Sam’s journal. She sat down in one of the bistro chairs and glanced at her wristwatch. Twelve-twenty-one. Not even three hours had passed since Scott’s disappearance. She didn’t waste more than a few seconds wondering how Sam had recognized Scott, how Sam had identified Scott as a threat. Scott might have been innocently betrayed by any one of the people he had interviewed over the past nine months. 

Compulsively she looked at her watch again. Twelve twenty-two. Surely by now Sam had realized Scott was no ordinary private detective or bounty hunter. God! She had to quit thinking about Scott. If she thought about Scott, if she thought about what Sam might have done to Scott in two hours and fifty-two minutes, she’d go crazy. Shriek or cry or do something to Dean. Oh, the temptation to _do something_ to Dean. She clenched her hands around her thighs.

Dean craned his head to look at Ororo. “Look, Rose. What’s going on here in Hibbing County is big, a lot bigger’n your friend Scott going missing. A lot of guys have gone missing in this county. Since 1964, at least one guy every twelve, eighteen months. Guys just driving through town. Guys on a hunting trip. Guys on a beer run. Always young, unmarried guys.”

Ororo glanced at Logan. He was slouched against the motel room door, arms folded, an almost bored expression on his face. She focused on Dean again. “How would you know that?”

“Me and my brother, we’ve always been real interested in spooky shit, you know? Ghost stories, shit like that?” Dean smiled engagingly, as if they were chatting over double lattes. “So we figured we’d finally go see some of these places we’re always reading about. And we’ve been to Salem and Gettysburg, and we were in Chicago last week, driving up and down Archer Avenue but we never did see Resurrection Mary – where was I, yeah – and we got to arguing, should we go see the Villisca Axe Murder House or the Bell Witch Cave, and then my brother heard about this place, Hibbing. How there’s supposed to be a creature living in the woods, comes out at night and grabs people and disappears with ’em. So naturally we had to come out this way, right?” 

Dean smiled again. Ororo stared back stonily. Earlier in the evening she had entertained the notion that Dean was an innocent dupe of his brother’s. She’d canned that idea upon seeing the weapons cache in the Impala’s trunk, and more damningly, the priests’ cassocks – two of them, not just one extra-large, extra-long cassock. That second cassock implicated Dean Winchester in the Miller family murders. Ororo tightened her grip on her thighs as Dean effortlessly prattled about road-tripping through haunted America. 

Apparently undeterred by her lack of enthusiasm, Dean kept talking. “But the thing is, the more we read up on it, the more we started thinking, this isn’t a ghost story. This is for real. These guys are for real. Somebody really did kidnap them. And whoever he is, he’s probably the one who started the whole legend, you know, about a creature living in the woods. A real kidnapper hiding behind a legend he started himself.”

Ororo glanced again at Logan. “Well, let’s say you’re not lying. People have been disappearing from around here for forty-two years and the FBI’s not involved yet?”

“Not ‘people.’ Women and children are ‘people.’ The cops don’t give a rat’s ass about guys who go missing, young, unmarried guys.” Dean spoke matter-of-factly. “And there’s no proof that any of them were kidnapped. There’s never any ransom note. They just disappear, along with their cars and everything they were carrying. And nothing they own ever turns up in a pawn shop or a chop shop. Their mommies and daddies can kick and scream but the cops don’t care. The cops think these guys were just ducking out on the Army, or child support, or gambling debts or student loans. You seen the local paper?”

Ororo shook her head. 

“Three nights ago, another guy disappeared. Guy named Alvin Jenkins. His mom says he was just taking the trash out. He’s just a loser living in his mom’s basement, but he’s a hometown boy. And the Daily Tribune’s already dropped the story. Story never even made it to the front page. He’s not a cute little girl with blonde pigtails, ya know?”

Ororo hesitated. Dean spoke more quickly, urgently. “Look, I got a lead, a solid lead. Not on this Jenkins guy, I mean your friend. There’s a surveillance camera mounted on a street light along Highway 169, about a hundred yards west of Kugel’s Keg. They don’t own it – I asked. They think it belongs to the Highway Department. And the way it’s angled, there’s gotta be footage of every car going in and out of that parking lot.”

Thoroughly surprised, Ororo stared at Dean.

“Well, ain’tcha bein’ helpful all of a sudden,” Logan drawled.

“No fuckin’ sudden about it. I want to find my brother as much as you want to find your boyfriend. And I’ll agree with you on one thing. We’re gonna find ’em in the same place.”

Ororo shifted restlessly in her chair and stood up. Apparently misunderstanding, Dean shook his head. “Cops won’t take a missing person’s report for twenty-four hours, not on a grown man. Longer’n that. Wait’ll you tell ’em your friend was last seen in a bar on a Friday night. Probably make you wait till Monday.”

Monday. God. They couldn’t wait till Monday. Scott wouldn’t survive till Monday. “He’s blind. They’ll make an exception.” Was she crazy? She couldn’t go to the cops about Scott. Scott Summers, grade school teacher by day, mutant terrorist by night, and _oh by the way,_ Erik Lensherr’s foster son. 

“Yeah, right. You just go right on telling yourself that. Or....” Dean stretched out the word. “You could work with me here and we could get the cops on it first thing in the morning.”

Ororo yearned to punch Dean’s handsome face. “What?” she growled. 

“Well, I’m guessing you been all through my car, right?” Dean grinned, like a little boy, hand caught in the cookie jar. 

“Yeah, what's with the armory in the trunk? You still waiting for the Red Dawn?”

“Old school, sister. Wake up and smell the conspiracy. It’s the ATF, they’re behind everything from Roswell to bird flu.” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know what? I’ll bet even Rush Limbaugh doesn't approve of credit card fraud and impersonating federal officers.”

Dean grinned again. “Well, you know, you wanna live your dream, can’t let a little thing like money stand in the way. It’s not like I’m knocking over little old ladies at the mini-mart.” 

_No, just raping sweet young things in St. Louis._ And yet she knew she was about to make a deal with the devil. At least no one but Logan was around to bear witness, and he had no credibility with anyone anymore, except maybe Rogue. 

“Get to the point,” she said coldly. “What is it you think you can do for me?” 

“Well, hell, I’ve already done something for you, and you don’t seem grateful at all.” Dean tugged meaningfully at his restraints.

“Well, maybe I’ll give ya a drink of water,” Logan said pleasantly, “and maybe I’ll put ya on the shitter. Maybe I’ll keep my dick in my pants, though I gotta say, I’m gettin’ real lonesome.”

Dean got to the point. “I got a Minnesota State Patrol ID. And the complete uniform. I can ask the local cops to look into my, uh, my cousin’s disappearance and they will, right away, as a personal favor. Cop to cop.”

Silence.

“And I won’t even mention Scott. He’s on the run, isn’t he? All of you are. Cuz there’s gotta be some reason why you hauled my ass in here instead of calling nine-one-one like normal people.”

__________________

Ororo sat outside the motel room on the split railing fence that existed, presumably, to hitch one’s horse to, and rubbed her eyes. Damn. She had to get her contacts out before they became permanently glued to her eyeballs. 

“The local paper only went online four years ago, and they haven’t put any of their back issues online. I can’t confirm it, not without spending a couple of days at the library. What Dean was talking about. Guys disappearing from this county for the past forty years.” Ororo paused. “And if it’s true, how the hell does Dean know about it?”

“The real question is why does he think Scott's my boyfriend?”

“Dunno,” Ororo said, poker-faced, “must be the new ’do. It is kind of butch. But if we can quit talking about your hair for a minute, I’d sure like to know more about this local legend. And when Dean looked into it, and why. Does he look to you like the kind of guy who spends hours slaving over a hot microfiche reader?”

“Not Dean.” Logan leaned against the railing and took out his half-smoked cigar. “Sam. Dean said, ‘My brother heard about it.’”

He stuck the cigar into his mouth and snapped open his lighter. Ororo stared at the tiny blue flame wavering beneath the tip of the cigar, weirdly illuminating the planes and angles of Logan’s face. Not for the first time that night she wondered why Logan was still around – why he’d shown up at all. It wasn’t like Scott had another fiancée to seduce. 

“He heard about it,” she said slowly. “Mr. Stephen King Junior. He heard about this legend. And he figured he’d take advantage of it. He – he fucking lured Scott here. To Hibbing, Minnesota. He left just enough clues. He made it just tough enough. Scott’s going to disappear and everyone’s going to blame the monster.”

Logan said nothing, until he took the cigar out his mouth and said, “I’ll get us something to eat. And some coffee.” 

She caught at the sleeve of Logan’s fresh shirt – one of Scott’s oversized flannels – as he pulled Dean’s key ring out of his pocket. “What did _you_ make of Dean’s story?” She waved her other hand in the direction of the closed motel room door. “You get anything out of it?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What?”

“Dean doesn’t want us looking in the woods.”

Ororo grimaced. “So all this shit about the surveillance camera footage. It’s just a diversion? Sam’s really hiding in the woods after all?”

“No. I guess Dean thinks he is but he isn’t. I guess he thinks he’s steering us wrong but he’s not. Cut a deal with the bastard. We gotta see that tape. Cuz Sam didn’t go into the woods. I coulda tracked that stink to Mars.” 

It was the longest speech she’d ever heard out of Logan. He turned away again and she caught his arm again. “Wait a sec. What was – what was that all about. Back at the bar. With the coat. That was Sam’s coat.”

Logan hesitated. She wondered if he were just going to ignore her. 

He said, instead, “He ain’t a mutie.”

Stunned, Ororo stared up into Logan’s face. “He has to be,” she blurted out.

Logan shrugged.

“A mutant killed Jessica Moore. A mutant killed those men in Saginaw. Mutant powers were used.”

“He ain’t one of us.” Logan spoke with finality. He looked across the parking lot at the window of the motel manager’s office. “And he ain’t one of them.” 

“What the hell are you saying? It’s not like there’s something behind Door Number Three. There is no Door Number Three.”

“There is now.”

Ororo didn't doubt Logan. She wished she did. Her mind reeled at the implications. 

“And all I know is, we got to find Sam Winchester. Find him and kill him. You got a problem with that?”

“That was the plan.”

“So all we got to do is stick to the plan.”

Logan stuck the cigar between his teeth, walked the few feet to the Impala and got behind the wheel. He spun the car around in a spray of gravel and took a left onto Highway 169. In a matter of seconds the Impala’s distinctive growl had faded away into the misty night.

Ororo said to the empty parking lot, “Since when do you stick to the plan?”


End file.
